The Last Mayor Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  Amo blinked, taking it in. He looked confused, so much like Vie after he got an answer to one of his questions that made no sense.

  More children. More babies. They'd never discussed it, not even before Maine, but now it was clear. For years their lives had been on hold, waiting to see if their children would have any kind of future, waiting to see if New LA would survive beyond a single generation. Now the dangers were gone and Sacramento was waiting, and it made sense.

  A tear broke down Amo's cheek, taking her by surprise.

  "How many kids?" he managed to ask. "Five? Ten?"

  Lara laughed, relief and humor mingling together. "I mean, do you mean, is that-" she fumbled.

  He laughed through his tears, and it felt good to see that. It felt like a renewing of their vows, spoken in front of Cerulean and Anna and the others on Venice Beach so long ago, binding them together. Maine and demons were nothing next to this. This was real.

  "Yes," he said. "It's a yes, you crazy woman. Come here."

  She hugged him. He hugged back. The future was coming.

  * * *

  They checked the vault in a kind of fuzzy dream, like moving through cotton candy, and Lara couldn't stop smiling. They gathered a few remnant packets of peas, a box of GM sorghum from Maine, and assorted other foil-packed seeds left behind in their last clearing out.

  "They're probably all dead anyway," Amo said, with a misplaced grin. It was infectious, like they'd broken some guilty taboo, kids at the back of class passing notes and finding it hilarious, like any minute they'd get caught.

  Five kids? Ten? It was crazy, nothing like the world either of them had come from, but why not? Be audacious. Repopulate the Earth.

  They stowed the seeds in a small fridge on the school bus, powered by solar panels on the roof, then headed out over the lot and onto the orange dirt path into Chino Hills, hand in hand. The path wound up over the low hills, until the corn field lay to their left; a wall of green shoots and stringy brown outer husks, with every here and there a glimmer of golden yellow kernels peeping through like glinting teeth.

  They babbled and said a lot of nonsense as they went giddily along the dirt path, while in the distance there was the coughing grumble of the combine starting to thresh.

  "I can't imagine it at all," Amo said for probably the fifth time. "Five kids. What would that be like?"

  "One of those shows," Lara answered, "like they used to have on, Mormons or just crazy welfare couples with ten kids running around, all raising each other."

  "Like the Kardashians. We are in LA."

  Lara laughed.

  "But I feel guilty to Vie and Talia, somehow," Amo mused.

  "Why? It's more brothers and sisters for them, with them at the top of the totem pole. Vie will have someone to tease."

  Amo laughed and shook his head. "Five kids."

  They were nearing the far corner of the cornfield, with a short stretch through a red maple grove beyond it leading to the fruit orchards, when abruptly Lara heard a voice calling out from the middle of the field.

  "Lara!"

  There was no thought involved, no process of deduction about who or what it might be; just a button punched in her head that triggered an immediate response. At once she turned sharply left and pushed into the corn, passing through a curtain into a different, shady world. This was the way to go, suddenly, the right way, and she didn't have any reason to question it.

  "Lara!" it came again, and she pressed on after it.

  Here the soil was soft and clay-like underfoot, trudging up wetly beneath her feet in thick red clods. The corn stalks rasped off her face, towering over her like the canyons of New York, and none of this seemed strange or unnatural. She knew the voice, was it her father? Maybe. Calling her to supper. She remembered what it was like back at her folks' place in the gated community in New Jersey, just a little girl amongst the small corn patch her mom had laid down in the yard.

  "So we can roast them," she'd said, with a conspiratorial wink. "I like them with soy sauce. Don't tell your father."

  It had been the oddest thing to say, the oddest secret to keep, but she kept it now.

  Children. That was good.

  "Lara?" Came another voice from behind her, but she knew all about voices in the darkness now. Hadn't it been a voice in the darkness last night that led her out into the water? How was this one any different? You couldn't trust them.

  "What are you doing?"

  She darted to the left then the right, zigzagging through the thick rushes of foliage that were half-brown and skirling off, like tall bananas unpeeling. It just made sense to dodge the voice. There was a stumbling behind her, a crashing through the plants but the voice quickly became distant.

  "Lara, where'd you go?"

  That was a secret. She smiled and looked ahead. They were waiting for her, everyone knew that. There was going to be a barbeque and her folks were dressed up in their usual gear; her dad in the bloodsmeared apron that said-

  We love you Lara.

  -across the front in smeared sharpie pen. Her mom would be there chewing on a roasted ear of corn, smothered in soy sauce and winking all the while. Wasn't that good? Wasn't that worth a hike?

  "I'm coming," she called and hurried on. There was the sound of an engine nearby, and raised voices calling out. It had to be a big truck, or maybe Mr. O'Grady's Cadillac. He was trying to get that old eight-cylinder running again, with a bunch of their neighbors gathered round popping off about what to do.

  KUKUKUKUK

  -fired the engine, clanking and clattering madly.

  Were any of them a mechanic? She smiled and trudged on. The clay was rising up her calves but that was OK, she could change at the house. The O'Grady's had a pool and surely they'd all end up in there anyway. She knew a little about engines now, but what really moved her was the law.

  She'd been the only black kid in her junior high; Mulgrove Row, just outside of town. That had been hard at times, trying to understand why the other kids looked at her differently, why they muttered the bad words at her sometimes, but she'd always been upbeat. Her parents prepared her well, and she had friends. Lucy was a lovely girl with the best collection of dolls, with remote control monster trucks for them to ride around in. Beverly loved to dance, and taught Lara how to twirl.

  It was the lynching that made her want to study law. It happened when she was only twelve, and separated her life into two parts: everything that came before and everything that followed. It was a boy from a nearby town; some college-age boys ran him over in their pick-up, then hauled him up on a rope to hang from a tree.

  Walter King, his name had been. Apparently he'd been dating a white girl from their college.

  She saw pictures of Walter smiling in the paper, lying bundled on their stoop before her Mom and Dad could grab it away. The story was everywhere after that, for months, and she grew up with it even as 9/11 happened and eclipsed everything.

  Perhaps thanks to the distraction, the college boys got off on some kind of technicality. That made her angry still. Influence of drugs, diminished responsibility, with promising futures ahead. Why take those away over a youthful mistake?

  Her interest in the law swelled from that, but took years to bear fruit. When it did though, and it was time to choose between high school or going to work in the local Steak'n'Shake, the answer was easy.

  College followed. Lucy and Beverly fell away like gathered cornstalks, as did everything else. Becoming a lawyer was her one goal, and she would reach it or burn herself out trying. Her parents had money and they helped. A law school in New York took her, and she worked like a demon. She worked as hard as she could, until suddenly, one day as if by chance, she met one of the boys who'd killed Walter King.

  It was in Manhattan, by 45th and Pine, where he was just walking along with his briefcase in his hand, plain as day. In that moment something cracked inside her. In moments she was having her first panic attack right there on the street. He walked on by, not eve
n noticing her.

  It wasn't the last.

  She pushed back against them. She went to therapy. She had counseling. She drove her way up to and through the bar exam, despite the hacking terror that threatened to burst out from her hammering chest at every moment, caused by every glance her way. She dismissed it a thousand times, but it didn't let go.

  It clung on. It got worse. Every time she thought about the law, about Walter King, about even trying to get some justice for all the souls who'd been abused and downtrodden since, it hit.

  In the end they hospitalized her. Her parents came down and sat by her side and held her hands and spoke in soft tones.

  "Why do you keep doing this to yourself, honey?" her mother asked. "Please, let it go. Come home."

  She had to look away. They didn't listen, didn't understand, because this wasn't her doing it to herself. This was the boys who killed Walter King doing it to her. This was an echo of that crime, rippling on endlessly within her. She couldn't just let it go, because it had made her what she was. It would be like becoming another person.

  She checked herself out of care. She got herself a job interview with a big law firm, concealing her attacks. They were impressed by her top grades in the bar, and it seemed like finally the dream would come true. Then she melted down right in the lobby. She didn't remember any of it, was found wailing and shaking in the water fountain with people looking on embarrassed all around, and hospitalized again. Her parents were there as before, but this time there were no words. There didn't have to be. Their very presence was an indictment.

  Once more she checked herself out, but this time she didn't even make it to the hospital door. She collapsed with thoughts of Walter King spinning in her mind.

  Giving up the law seemed to heal her. It was temporary, she believed that at the start. She took the job as a barista at Sir Clowdesley's, far removed from the law, and hunkered down to work with the belief that she'd return to it some time soon, and pick up the quest for justice that she'd planned for so long.

  All this rolled through her mind as she walked through the corn. It was simple and clear. She was a child again, innocent, before Walter King or any of the horror to come. They'd have barbeque and get in the pool. The drone of the engine was getting louder, which meant Mr. O'Grady was finally having some luck.

  KUKUKUKUKUK

  She looked up, and saw a white contrail in the sky. A plane. Perhaps Anna's Pilatus, but would Anna be in the pilot's seat or would it be Cerulean with her by his side, or would it be-

  BOOM

  She spun at the sound, feeling disoriented. For a moment the reality before her shifted and she lost track of where she was and what she was doing.

  Canyon-lined streets stretched away on either side. She was at an intersection, staggering and confused, in the midst of New York after the apocalypse. She was back on the street in her heels, when the plane crashed on the Mott Haven bridge. Bodies had lurched out of the buildings and chased her, and here they were now, but they weren't the zombies she remembered, but tall red demons. Dark liquid dripped from their open black mouths. Their hands were claws and somewhere a little girl was crying. She didn't know if this was herself or her daughter, Talia, but she had to do something.

  The demons closed on her and she strode up to fight them. They had the faces of the boys who'd killed Walter King, forever burned into her mind, taunting and grasping and never punished. She whipped off her heels and wielded them like clubs, driving their stiletto heels into soft eyeballs and through brainpans, spurting oily, viscous liquid out. She stabbed and stabbed, but the demons kept on coming and it was never enough, as their hands closed around her chest and began to pull.

  BOOM.

  She spun and now she was standing by the YOD of the Hollywood sign, looking over LA as it burned. The contrail in the sky now swooped down like a rollercoaster, where it hit and turned the Chinese Theater into a fireball. She felt the heat on her skin and now the roaring of Mr. O'Grady's engine was only getting louder. Demons were ripping bodies all around her and the little girl was crying and then Cerulean was there too, right in front of her.

  "Lara," he said softly, kneeling in amongst the corn, his body expanding, limbs ballooning and turning red under the T4's touch. "Please. Help me!"

  KUKUKUKUKUKUK

  From the corn bursts the bright red corn combine, its six huge spikes on the projecting header dividing the rows neatly and scything toward Cerulean like a bulldozer's scoop. Corn stalks were swallowed in and broken on the snapping rolls, tearing the ears clear and then tearing into Cerulean.

  She gasped as the header snagged the back of his thighs first and scooped him up. His clothing caught in the gathering chains and sucked him on to the spiraling rolls, which raked deep spiraling gouges all around his body, like an apple being peeled. Blood splattered the corn as he was sucked further into the chain with a series of sharp, startling cracks like gunfire as his bones broke on the augur. Blood sprayed out as the kernel-stripping rotating drum above the augur flayed his swollen red skin and muscle away. The last of him she saw was his head, his eyes on her, before it burst like a ripe melon in the machine's merciless grip.

  CRACK

  Then blood was everywhere. Lara dropped to her knees and sobbed. It was happening again; the heat rising, the panic hitting and there was nothing she could do. LA burned and her parents died and Walter King burned too, and on came the roar of the bloody-mouthed combine. There was no fighting it like there was no way to fight the demons, no way to fight the boys who'd killed Walter, no way to make things right.

  She spread her arms to accept it, like Amo in Iowa, because there was no way she could fight it alone.

  AMO 2

  The corn whips by either side as I run through the field, pelting my shoulders and face.

  "Shut it off, Lara's in the field!" I yell into the walkie. "Repeat, shut the combine off, Josh!"

  I yell it and run but the combine's too close, still driving through the corn ahead and there's no way he can hear me. Maybe he hasn't even got his walkie on, and why would he out in the field?

  I haven't got a clue where Lara is. The combine's drawing near to my right and I'm back in the damn corn, searching for someone I love.

  KUKUKUKUKUKUK

  "Lara!" I shout, and waves of light from above flicker in and out of my eyes like an old movie, as the swaying sheaves of corn tumble and roll like waves with my rough passage. "Lara, where are you?"

  It can't be some kind of joke, but what else can I think? It wasn't right, the way she just walked in. Without a word, without any sign. It took a second for me to even notice, then I paused a second longer, thinking maybe it was some kind of urgent need for privacy. If I hadn't done that, she wouldn't have got away.

  But she got away.

  "Lara!"

  KUKUKUKUKUKUK says the combine, and I'm veering closer now. I try Josh again as I crash through the stalks, the air filled with drifting spore and the stink of the sticky red clay underfoot. We just irrigated the channels yesterday and it's claggy everywhere, like warm tar.

  I stop and listen, panting in the corn with the combine thundering nearby, straining for the slightest sound. Her breath, her movement, her calling my name. Something has gone very wrong and I have no idea what, and that terrifies me. It's like the coma again, but I can't even see her now. If the corn were to swallow her up I'd never know. If she left the field and just kept running, she'd be gone forever.

  "Lara!"

  My throat burns but there's no reply. I spin and the corn is a jumble, no clear directions now, nothing but gold and green and the red mud underfoot, and I can't hear a damn thing for the KUKUKUK of the combine.

  I run toward it. I get into an irrigation row and run toward its flank from the side, so I can make out the shape of it through the forest of leaves and thick brown ears; the bulky bright red side, the trapezoid shape of the cab, the jet of shaved kernels shooting back into the wagon towed along behind, all passing by like a gian
t snake slithering through underbrush.

  I close in and wave but Josh can't see me, he's focused on the machine and the corn ahead just like Lara told him to. I switch angle and cut across the rows at a diagonal, aiming to cut it off, until some dozen rows over I glimpse her.

  Lara, kneeling in the mud with her arms spread wide, her head tilted back like she's receiving a message from on high, directly in the path of the combine.

  I don't even bother to shout, I just run harder, knowing as I go that I can't possibly reach her in time. The mud makes a sprint impossible, forbids anything other than a leaping, gamboling lurch, but I do that as fast as I can as the KUKUKUKUK draws in and I pick out the riotous rotation of the threshing wheel at the combine's front drawing closer. It'll suck her up like a vacuum and break her bones in seconds. The rakes inside, meant for stripping the cornhusks away to get at the gleaming gold, will tear gouges up and down her body like it was a bag of seed.

  My thighs burn and she's not moving and then I hit the combine's side hard enough to make a resounding CLANG, which finally pulls Josh's head back to look. I grab hold of the cab's edge and scrabble in, barely avoiding my feet getting sucked under the big back wheels. He stares at me blankly and I shove him aside, making room for me to roll half onto the seat and half onto his lap, but at least now I'm looking straight down the line. Lara is right ahead, disguised within the corn but no more than ten yards away, and Josh shouts something and I grab the two levers I need, because there's no way the blades will shut down in time.

  Yank, jerk and pull with all my strength.

  The combine coughs and turns, plowing a curve into the left, and all I can do is watch the right tip of the rotary cage as it sweeps an arc through the field like a katana blade, chopping stalks down and approaching Lara and-

  It misses. By a breath, by a foot perhaps, the great red machine rolls on, locked into a hard left turn, even as the engine is winding down and the blades are slowing. I push the spluttering Josh off me and jump out of the cab and into the mud, then I'm by Lara's side as she flops like a puppet with its strings cut. I slide in on my knees and catch her, and start muttering things like she'll be fine, and what's wrong, what happened, but she doesn't seem to see me, and instead looks up at the sky and mouths words I can't make out.